In the Epilogue of Understanding Flowers and Flowering, Beverley Glover states that the book ‘was conceived with a single clear aim: to link what we know of the molecular and genetic control of how flowers come to look as they do with what we know from evolutionary and ecological perspectives about why they look as they do.’ This is an ambitious undertaking; Glover attempts to bring together diverse fields including flower induction, floral pigmentation, pollination biology, development and developmental genetics.